FRANK VEIN

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Welcome to Expedition Business, where we talk about the highs and lows of our entrepreneurs in their business adventures. My name is Christél Rosslee-Venter. Today we have the immense privilege of talking to Frank Vine, founder of Future Capital.

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Frank has been a powerhouse banker since he started his career at Barclays Bank in London, UK way back in 1990. Since then, Frank held senior positions at ABN Amro and JP Morgan, amongst others. His last corporate position was at ABSA, where he was responsible for all business banking in Kenya, Mozambique, Mauritius, Seychelles and Tanzania.

00:56
Frank, my number one question to you is, if you were in a position like that, why on earth would you want to start your own company?
Frank: Well, I had left banking before back in 2004 to start a business, totally unrelated to banking. It was in the logistics.

01:21
And that didn’t work out. It was with other shareholders, never worked out. I was only in it for a year and then came back to banking. So it wasn’t until 2016 when I left JP Morgan that I decided to get into business, specifically with Future Capital, my company now, because I enjoyed the training aspect of the whole thing. I always enjoyed

01:50
training young bankers while I was working as a banker. And I wanted to get into it. And I started Future Capital slow in getting going. I think I probably underestimated the task ahead to really build it into a decent sized business. And it was then probably about a year or so after that, year, year and a half after that, that a good friend of mine who was running the international

02:20
division at ABSA asked me to come and work with him there. And that’s how I ended up back at ABSA. Yeah, I quite enjoyed it. It was something different. I was always in investment banking. So to be in the business bank was quite different for me, but it was quite enjoyable. And then, of course, post-COVID, a whole lot of things changed, a whole lot of things happened few tragedies

02:47
and that made me re-examine exactly how I want to go forward. And that’s when I decided, I do love future capital. I do love the business. I do love the training side of things. And I decided to give future capital another go, learning the lessons of the past. And it was in January 20, 2022

03:15
So just over a year ago that I restarted Future Capital, although it was a bit of a side hustle while I was at ABSA as well, because I had a joint venture, which I still have with the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. So I did some training through that and then relaunched Future Capital in just over a year ago again. And that’s what I’m doing now.
Christél: You’ve mentioned a tragedy in 2020.

03:45
Frank: Yeah, it’s well, it’s the guy who hired me or is a good friend of mine at ABSA International. He unfortunately died of COVID in 2021, the beginning of 2021. And, you know, things obviously took a big change. All the plans we are putting in place for what we wanted to do with the business, that all changed.

04:14
there was a new change of guard, the top of ABSA. And yeah, it’s really just, it didn’t, for me, it wasn’t really the business that I had originally joined. And I had to think about whether I wanted to stay and I decided, no, let me give future capital another go, let me go for it again.
Christél: Wow. And since when you’ve been on your own?

04:43
You haven’t regretted your decision?
Frank: No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. And even though when I first started Future Kaplan 2016 and it was a bit of a frustrating year with things not coming together and going a bit slow, even then when I went back to ABSA, I still longed for it as it were. Never regret. I always yearned for it. I suppose that’s why I kept it as a side hustle even throughout my ABSA years.

05:10
and so yeah, so when I got back into it, I really put all my energies into it and here I am still. Yeah.
Christél: Okay, but it’s quite different from corporate world down to an entrepreneurial situation.
Frank: Absolutely, absolutely, especially when you come from an investment banking scenario where it’s lovely bonuses and you know you get your salary check every month without thinking nowadays I have

05:39
pay myself and make sure I’ve got all the cash flows that do it. So, but yeah, I’m building something for the future and I’m really enjoying what I’m doing. So, but you’re right, it is a very, very big difference from working in a major bank to running my own little company on my own, working out of WeWork offices. So, yeah, so it’s a big change, but I love it a bit.

06:08
Christél: And you haven’t managed to get some of your apps of friends to come and join you?
Frank: No, not yet. I’ve had one of my other banking friends who every now and then would do some courses for me on a contracting basis. But no, I have not had any other colleagues of mine to come and join me in the full.

06:31
basis. No, I presume that the banking bonuses are too lucrative to give up. I can imagine.
Christél: I can imagine. Frank, but something very interesting in your history is you started out with a degree in biochemistry. How on earth did you end up in the banking space?
Frank:It’s quite an interesting story because I mean I always enjoyed science. I studied my science

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I did my O levels. As you know, in the UK, you do O and A levels in science, very science-based. And it seemed natural to do my A levels in science. I thought, okay, let me go and do a degree in biochemistry. So it seemed quite interesting. I like the biochemical world. And yeah, and without thinking about a career at all, I then…

07:29
got a place at University of Essex to study bio, it’s actually biological and medicinal chemistry, and loved it to bits. But you know, second year at university, you start to think, hang on a minute, I’ve got a year left here, and then I’m going to have to start doing some work. And I didn’t, although I enjoyed studying biochemistry, I couldn’t see myself working as a scientist. And I was in a bit of trouble thinking, what am I going to do? So I started

07:59
At the time in the UK, and I think they weren’t really worried about which degree you studied. So if you look at careers in accounting, in banking, in law even, you don’t have to have studied those subjects at a degree level. So for example, if you look at the former Prime Minister of the UK, Margaret Thatcher, she had a degree in chemistry and became a lawyer. I have a friend who graduated with me who today is a chartered accountant in the UK.

08:29
So I thought, okay, let me go into finance because this would have been, I graduated in 1990. So the late eighties, while I was doing my degree, that was a very exciting time in the UK and London for the finance industry. I mean, banking was really flying. People making loads of money, driving Porsches. It was a great, I mean, it’s a revolution in banking in the eighties. And I thought, you know, yeah, I wouldn’t mind some of that, I thought, okay. And

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I interviewed with all the major banks. I told them what I wanted to do. I told them I wanted to go in investment banking. And Barclays is the one who said, look, after my second interview, we know you want to go into investment banking. You want to train in the city, which is really the prime area financial part of London. They said, you join us as a graduate trainee. We’ll do all your training in the city and you’ll get, and I thought fantastic.

09:26
And yeah, and I joined them in 1990, which interestingly was actually the time when everything went into reverse and the good times ended, property market, bottom fell out of the property market. And my first job at Barclays in London was being responsible for the liquidation accounts of what is today Canary Wharf. So that whole Canary Wharf area initially went bust. It was a white elephant.

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Barclays was one of the lenders and I had a responsibility of looking after those accounts.
Christél: Wow, well, lots of training opportunities there for you.
Frank: Absolutely. Like I said, I joined banking at a very difficult time in the 1990-91. So instead of the big bonuses and the good times, it was really down to the basics, understanding

10:20
what a bank really does and how to support your clients, how to help your clients through difficult times. So yeah, it actually was a very good, upon reflection, it was a very good way to start my banking career during a difficult period. So yeah, seeing what kind of problems clients can encounter and how they can get out of it. So yeah, it was a very good learning experience.

10:47
Christél: Frank, something that interests me is you left South Africa at the age of 12, I assume with your parents and not on your own. Yeah. But when you decided to come back to South Africa, how did that happen?
Frank: I came back in 1996. To me, South Africa seemed like an exciting place to be at the time. It was just after 1994.

11:14
things were opening up, sanctions obviously were being removed. And I thought, you know, this is an exciting place to be. And it was always home, you know. I used to come back every couple of years for Christmas as well and see my family here, et cetera. So I thought, you know, this could be an exciting place to be. I really, you know, it looks like exciting things are happening. And Barclays at the time was reopening in South Africa.

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You’ll remember, I think mid-80s, they sold their franchise here, and they decided to reopen. And I said, well, you know, why don’t I go and set up the corporate banking division in Johannesburg? And they agreed. And yeah, and the rest is history. I thought, yeah, let me go. Let me go. And, of course, you know, to be out of that London weather and to…

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you know, and to wake up to sunny weather every day was actually, you know, as a South African, you tend to take that for granted. But trust me, if you’ve been working and living in London for many years, it was absolutely an amazing thing to wake up in the morning and see sunshine. It’s, it does lift the mood. And yeah, and stayed ever since. Yeah.
Christél:Did I hear correctly? Were you the person responsible for bringing Barclays back to South Africa?

12:39
Frank: No, no, I’m not lawful bringing back, at least when they had set up the business here. So essentially it was essentially just a trading business, doing foreign exchange, that sort of things. And they wanted to expand the business doing a bit of private banking. And they obviously wanted to expand the business to the corporate side. And I said, well, those are where my skills are. Let me come and help set up the corporate banking business of the bank.

13:08
And that’s why I came over to set up the Barclays Corporate Banking business.
Christél: Wow, that is super, super impressive. You obviously enjoyed the sunshine when you came back. Do you still enjoy the sunshine? Are you ready to give it up to go back to the UK again?

13:27
Frank: No, not at all. I mean, I still love London. My mother still lives there. I’ve got a network there, having grown up there. I did my secondary schooling there, university there, first few years of working there. So I do have a connection there, and I do enjoy going back to London. If I haven’t been to London for a bit, then I started getting a bit of withdrawal symptoms. But I still love South Africa with all its problems.

13:54
I still love it here and I still think we can achieve a hell of a lot. So no, I haven’t, maybe my kids will go to London. By virtue of the fact of how long I’ve been there, they all have British passports, so they can go and start there again if they want. As youngsters, London is great.

14:16
But for where I am in my life, South Africa is for me, I enjoyed very much and I visit London as much as I can.
Christél: You still see a future for South Africa?
Frank: Oh, absolutely. That’s why I’m still here. A lot of people say to me, you’ve got a UK passport, why don’t you get on the plane and get back? I said, no, I think there’s a hell of a future here.

14:41
We’ve gone a little bit awry over the last few years, but it’s something we can definitely turn around. There’s no doubt about it. And I’d like to be part of that. So I’m still very happy where I am. And I do have confidence that things will get better. I always said to people that when all this started, that we probably need to…

15:08
to hit rock bottom before things change. And I think we sort of now that stage and I think the only way here from here on is up. And I do think we can do it. I have no doubt about that.
Christél: You almost sound like a politician.
Frank: Yeah. No, I’m very far from a politician. Very, very far from a politician. And I’ve got no interest in politics whatsoever. But I’m just very confident that we can turn it around.

15:37
and build a great country. I’m confident of that.
Christél: Okay, so no aspirations for political future, even though you want to be part of the change?
Frank:Absolutely, no, no, no, no, no. You won’t see me running for anything.
Christél: Well, that is, I’d like to say it’s good to hear, but yeah, let’s keep it at that. So, Frank?

16:04
Obviously it sounds like things are going really great in your business, but I suppose there are still days when you think, wow, is this worth it? Or don’t you get any of those negative days?
Frank: No, I get them all the time. I said to someone the other day, especially the business that is, you know, that in a way still building up.

16:29
You know, you tend to get to in through a cycle, a continuous cycle of feast and famine. You know, there are months where, you know, it just seems to be things are going totally fantastic and the money is flowing in and the other months where it’s pretty barren and you think, my God, am I going to survive? Is this the right thing to do? So yeah, so you go through that all the time.

16:54
And you sometimes say to yourself, is that really a business here? Am I doing the right thing? And then you realize, you know, there’s a lot of businesses out there, a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of business owners who go through that, right? Who go through that moment where things are pretty tight and you work through it. You just gotta have that persistence.

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to keep going and things will come right in the end. So, yeah, no, I do go through those ups and downs. There’s no doubt about it. You get your immense highs where one particular bank got been speaking to them for since last year, continuously, continuously calling them, sending mails, and they would…

17:52
yeah, yeah, we’ll come back to you. Yeah, yeah, we’ll come back to you. And then out of the blue, they call me and say, hey, you know, this thing we talked about, let’s talk, we want to do something major here. And you think, wow, that’s a high, that’s a high. And then, you know, other times you get this, you know, from someone you think you, you know, you have a nice first meeting and then the second meeting is, or the second email is like, now forget it, we’re not interested.

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So you have your highs and lows in this business and you just got to, you got to be pretty tough about it and not take things personal and just keep persisting, you know, and just keep going. That’s really what it’s all about.
Christél: So your biggest challenges, would you say that’s all to do with sales, getting the work in?
Frank: Yeah, I mean, right now that is the biggest challenge to make sure I get

18:48
flow of business. It made me have to re-look at exactly what my product offering is, how we should be structured to ensure that I get a reasonable amount of business flow throughout the year. I’m sort of getting there now. I’ve now got an idea of how to position the business to make sure that I get that.

19:15
But yeah, that is a challenge to really build a business with a sustainable level of revenue that you can rely on. Not impossible. And the thing is not to be too purist about things and to make sure you can be flexible enough to make changes where you need to make changes. And yeah, and then try and build that, like I said, that sustainable level of income.

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I’m sort of on the cusp there now and I’m really looking forward to the next few months and for next year and where I hope to have a business that really generates revenue sustainably at a good level on a monthly basis.
Christél: Just something that I was wondering is that generally I believe in the banking industry they seek training more for soft skills but you don’t do soft skills.

20:15
Frank: Well, when I said you don’t have to be too much of a pure SGF to start changing. That’s exactly what my business is going through. When I started Future Capital, very much technical, right? It was very much technical courses, banking courses. And then I had to start broadening my offerings. So I am putting together more selection of what you call soft skill courses.

20:42
potentially buying another company that offers those type of courses as well, that will add to my offering. So yeah, I think this time next year, Future Capital will be very different from how it started out, where it was a pure investment banking-type training business. It will be probably a lot of different courses.

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a lot of soft skill courses and even five years from now I think Future Capital as an organization will also be completely different with not just training but maybe even some tertiary type qualifications as well that it will be offering. So yeah you need to adopt and adapt rather and grow.

21:36
your offering to really build a sustainable business. I always say to people right now, I’m self-employed. And being self-employed, I think is you get your salary regularly, you’ve got sick days, you got paid leave, sick leave and that sort of thing. When you’re self-employed, you don’t have those. If you’re not working, you’re not getting paid. And what you need to do is transition from being self-employed to being someone who owns a business

22:05
business that generates sustainable revenue, even if you’re not there. And then that’s really where I want to take future capital.
Christél: It sounds extremely impressive. And especially the part where you are planning to go into tertiary education. But while you were saying that something that I’ve heard, and I might be completely wrong, is that they talk globally of a collapse of a financial system. As we know it.

22:32
and with a massive impact that AI and blockchain and ledgers replacing banks and techno currencies. Are you not scared of that? Do you think it’s something that’s just…
Frank: I think that’s always been a doomsday scenario about banking and the collapse of the financial system, but it never really happens, right? In my life in banking, we’ve been through so many crises,

23:01
in banking where people said that’s it. I mean, I mentioned the crisis in 1990. There was the subprime crisis in 2007, 2008. And then that was also, that’s the end of banking. Banking’s finished. And then recently with the collapse of the Silicon Valley bank, I said, ah, that’s it, banking is now, all the banks are gonna…

23:28
That’s going to be a knock-on effect, and the banks are going to collapse because they’re holding government bonds that are worthless in their portfolios. And it hasn’t happened. I don’t think all those factors you mentioned will lead to the collapse in banking. They’ll probably sit somewhere alongside banking, as we know it. Of course, banking has changed very much from when I started in 1990, even throughout the

23:58
has changed a hell of a lot. But it’s still there, that the core of what a bank does and how a bank operates is still there. And that will continue. I don’t see any implosion of banking to be taken over by, I think AI is a very important factor. It will play an important part in banking, but it’s all part of the evolution of banking rather than the end of banking. I think that’s probably the best way to put it.
Christél: Okay.

24:26
That makes sense, that makes sense. Yeah. But just a quick question, when all these storms happen around you, whether it’s from outside or inside your company, what is the fun and exciting ways that you use to regroup and refocus and rejuvenate your energy levels? Or do you just keep on working?

24:54
Frank: Well, it’s all, the thing you got to do is look at every, especially down moments as a challenge, right? That’s how I do it anyway. I always think that there’s this little devil there, they’re trying to challenge me to see if I can, if I’m going to fold, or if I’m going to survive. And then you see it, when you see it as a challenge, something to overcome.

25:18
and then you put your mind to it. That’s how I do it. And what I tend to also do, I think one of the things a lot of people get them into, when they’re faced with a problem, whether it’s a cashflow problem or whatever, they tend to, and then I’ve also been guilty of that. You think of, you think way ahead, okay? You think way ahead, and all you see is gloom. You just look into the abyss.

25:45
and I like to break things down into little bits and pieces and say, okay, these are the problems, let’s break it down. That part of the problem, I don’t need to solve for another month. So let’s put that away. What do I need to solve today? What I need to work with today and literally start solving things bit by bit, you know. And I find that when I do that, when I break, it’s

26:15
than looking at the whole problem as a whole and say, how do I solve this whole mess of problem? Rather break it down into pieces and solve it bit by bit. And it gets there, you can get there. And also the thing about it is also to just remember that literally every problem has a solution. Yeah, every problem has a solution. And the people who don’t find the solution are those that…

26:45
tend to panic. And it’s like being in a room on fire, you know, the person that panics will see all the closed windows and doors and there’s a person that tries to keep calm, reevaluate say, you know, I need to get out of here. That’s the person who’s going to see the one open window, the one open door. And that’s really what I feel like when you

27:15
about what this means that, you know, I’m going to lose my business or everything. But just focus on the problem, work the problem. Every problem has a solution of some sort.
Christél: It almost sounds like you are that person that never panics, always in control.
Frank: I can have my panic days. I can’t have my, oh, not panic days, but depression days when…

27:42
When I will or depression times when I feel like, oh my gosh, you know, things are not. But when I when I when I when I’m in that scenario, I’ll tell you a bit of a secret while I do it. When I’m in that scenario, I literally can go and sit in a corner somewhere and feel sorry for myself. I feel sorry for myself. I think this is useless and I’m finished and whatever you but it’s almost like I’m getting all those negative feelings out.

28:12
And once I’ve done that, I can literally get up, go to my desk and say, okay, fine, let’s deal with this. And whenever, when I look at the problem, I start to solve it. Even when I try to have a negative thought about it, for some reason I can’t because of things, thought of every negative thing. And I got it out of my system. And then it’s just about, I literally go through a few minutes of just, or even an hour.

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of just like, yeah, this is crazy, it’ll never work, I’m finished and whatever you, and it somehow helps me get all the negativity out. And once I have done that, then I can then focus on the problem and solve it.
Christél: Well, it sounds like you always at work, or do you have some hobbies?
Frank: I do have hobbies, I think it’s important to switch off. It’s important to switch off. I actually recently started flying lessons, would you believe?

29:08
Yes, yes. I always loved airplanes. Loved airplanes, loved flying in airplanes. And I recently thought, well, if you love it so much, why don’t you learn how to fly? And yeah, and it’s great. And I find when I’m up there with the instructor, it’s just so much focus on the aircraft. What am I doing? Where am I? For that hour or so up there, nothing else matters, right?

29:37
I forget about work, I forget about everything, it’s just about me, the aircraft, the scenery and then coming back down safely. I find it a great release.
Christél: I assume you don’t have a fear of heights.
Frank: No, I don’t. I’d be very, very difficult to fly with a fear of heights.

30:05
But yeah, I do enjoy being up there. I do enjoy the whole thing about aviation, the science behind it, and then just being up there in an airplane. And yeah, it’s just great fun.
Christél: Completely forgetting about everything. At work-
Frank: Completely forget it. Because I can’t think about anything. And your mind doesn’t allow you to think about-

30:32
Oh, who do I need to call? No, it’s about, okay, what’s my temperature, some pressures, what’s my altitude? Okay, let me call in and tell other aircraft where I am. Okay, I’m gonna head out to that now. But bumpy here. It’s just literally, that’s all I can think about. And that is great. Everything, nothing else matters, but you and the aircraft and coming down safely.

30:59
Christél: I can just imagine you up in the air with a massive smile on your face, having a time of your life.
Frank: Absolutely. I’ve got a picture of that. I’ll send you one. Okay, great. Then we can post it with this podcast. That would be awesome. But you’ve also got a family at home. You’ve got children. How old are they now?
Frank: So my daughter is 25. So she’s out of the house now. She’s 25.

31:28
And it’s interesting, my ex-wife and I, we’re both academics, she’s a lawyer, I’m a banker, she loves music. So she studied music and she’s now a music teacher at her old school and she loves it to bits, you know, at Rodeen and she loves it to bits. My son, he loves photography, he loves photography, loves the arts.

31:55
So it’s really weird how both our children are very artistic and not very academic at all. And he’s 21 and still trying to decide how he wants to do what he wants to do. So, but he’s still young. He’s still young. He’s got time for that.
Christél: 21 is extremely young, but it’s completely different from where you come from.
Frank: Absolutely.

32:23
And it’s a different world, I suppose. I mean, I’m thinking, what are you going to do with that? Are you going to earn money with that? But yeah, so it’s a different world.
Christél: Frank, if you could be your 20 year old self again and change anything, what would it be?
Frank: Oh, I’d probably get into business sooner.

32:46
I really, and I tell my kids now, if you want to get into business, try and do it earlier rather than later, bearing in mind that if I got into business earlier, I wouldn’t be doing future capital because the reason why I’m doing future capital is because of the experience I gained in my career over the years. But I would probably want to get into business earlier and make all the mistakes.

33:16
at an earlier stage when I’ve got very little or no responsibilities. But yeah, that’s probably what I would do. I’d want to get into business earlier.
Christél: Making mistakes earlier, what would be the something specific?
Frank: Yeah, you know, getting into the wrong business like I did with my logistics business was the wrong business to get into.

33:42
And you make that mistake, and I made that mistake at a time when I still had a young family, school fees, and it was difficult, right? And it created real worry, and I had to rush back into banking to make sure that my family doesn’t suffer unduly because of it. So yeah, I probably would…

34:10
So from their perspective, yeah, I would like to do that type of thing more. If you start earlier when you don’t have those responsibilities, you can make those mistakes. Like I said to my son, if you want to start a photography business or whatever, you do it now. Start it. Make your mistakes. If you lose money or things don’t work out, you can always recover. You don’t have school fees to worry about. So yeah, I would start it earlier.

34:39
That’s probably what I wish I had my time again.
Christél: Anything else that you want to change?
Frank: No, I’m pretty happy with how things have turned out. I wouldn’t change what I’ve studied. I love being a scientist. I still enjoy science. I always read science journals, etc.

35:08
So I’m glad that I’ve got that part of me. I love business, I love finance. So I don’t regret getting into that at all. And yeah, I mean, even the businesses that I’ve been in that failed, I don’t regret it. Yeah, if I could turn the clock back, I would do things differently, of course, but that’s with the benefit of hindsight.

35:36
but learned a lot of lessons from that and won’t make those mistakes again. And yeah, life is a learning process and you can never regret what you’ve done. And as long as you learn from it and move forward from that, I think that’s the most important thing.

36:03
That’s how it works. There’s a lot of things we can change with the hindsight of, with the 2020 hindsight, but we don’t have it. No. And so just learn from whatever mistakes you’ve made and see it as part of what makes you as a person as you are today. Right? Absolutely. That’s really what it’s about.
Christél: Very, very wise words. I think we can do a quote on that.

36:33
Did I hear you correctly that you read science journals? Is this for fun?
Frank: Oh yes, oh yes, I read science journals. I’m still very much interested in science. I read science journals. I read the science sections of newspapers and magazines. I love the universe.

37:02
can tell you anything you want to know about black holes and quasars and everything else. Yeah, I definitely I’m very much a scientist at heart.
Christél: I am impressed. But speaking of reading what would

37:29
be your number one book that you can suggest for people who want to go in business and want to be motivated?
Frank: Whenever I give my training, it depends obviously on what you want to get out of it, but I probably have a couple of books that I would suggest to people. My favorite book of course is

37:58
chronicles the hostile takeover of RJR Nabisco, which at the time was the biggest company in the US. And it’s a great book because of how it’s written and also some of the technicalities about M&A transactions that come out of that. So from a technical point of view, to me, that’s a great sort of book to read.

38:27
inspirational type of scenario. I think I love Richard Branson. I love his story. He wrote, I think his first book was Losing My Virginity, which I think is a great book for anyone to read in terms of which chronicles his whole journey to where he was, some of the problems he had. And I still use that sometimes, a case study of how we build up Virgin Atlantic into what it is. I mean,

38:56
It’s like totally breaking all the rules of business. I mean, he started an airline on which at the time, probably still today, the busiest air route in the world, which is London, New York. He started an airline on that route with one aircraft. Now, you can just imagine, I mean, anyone goes to a funder and say, listen, I’m going to start airline, London, New York with one airplane.

39:24
competing with British Airways, United Airlines Continental, Pan Am at the time. They totally do it, totally. They were totally crazy. And he did it, and he focused on getting the culture and the offering right. And to me, you know, and then that book sort of chronicles a lot of that, some of the problems he had with British Airways.

39:50
the pain of having to sell his music company to fund his airline. That to me is a great book for any aspiring business person to get some inspiration from.
Christél: Yeah I can vouch for that one but I must say when you were talking about your aviation hobby and seeing you flying I was sort of picturing you with Richard Branson up there.

40:22
Frank: Yeah, so maybe I should give him a call and see if he wants to come and fly with me. He’s crazy enough.
Christél: Maybe if he hangs from your plane. Yeah, exactly. Probably. Yeah, he wants to do something as crazy as that. I’m sure. Absolutely.
Frank: And he’s also sorry, I was going to add, it is also a guy who’s been, who’s had successes and failures, right? And then never let any of them define him. So yeah.

40:52
Christél: Definitely a role model on successes, but also on failures. Very, very true. Yes, absolutely. Okay. Frank, your metaphorical mountain that you still want to climb in the next three to five years, what would that be?
Frank: I really would like to, I mean, like I said, I got into business probably very late. I mean, I’m in my 50s now.

41:19
And I really would like to, next five years, is the focus for me is to build future capital into a fantastic training organization. A company that provides vocational and tertiary training, maybe even listed. You know, that really is something that I would like to do.

41:44
That’s where I would like to see future capital in five years. That to me would be a great way to go into my later stages of life. Okay.
Christél: Although you say you mentioned that you’re in your 50s as if that is old, is that not when life only starts?
Frank: Well, it certainly does for me. In a way, it certainly does for me. I’m starting a whole new career. I started flying.

42:13
So yeah, absolutely, that’s when life begins.
Christél: Spoken by somebody that’s also in her 50s.
Frank: Yeah, absolutely, it’s when a new chapter, a new life begins. Yeah, and I’m loving it. I’m loving it.
Christél: I’m so glad to hear. What would you say?

42:40
Be your number one quote to give to… My number one quote to give to… Aspiring entrepreneurs, existing entrepreneurs that need some inspiration.
Frank: Oh, gosh. It’s more like stories than rather than quotes, but yeah, it’s really about… I would say don’t be…

43:10
Don’t be afraid to fail. Yeah. Don’t be afraid to fail. That really is because when you get into, there’s very few entrepreneurs who build successful businesses without failing at some point. And you always need to fail to be able to understand what you need to succeed. So don’t be afraid to fail.

43:40
And probably the other one I would say, don’t wake up one day wishing you’d taken more risk.
Christél: Okay, and we can quote you on that. I see the quote that our next daily motivational quote going out. Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t be afraid to take risks. Absolutely.

44:09
start an award program for the biggest business failures?
Frank: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And yeah, indeed. And see how people have come through on the other side.
Christél: Yep. Because yeah, I think you are completely correct. We are so used to just looking at the

44:38
and not the failures, the fact that somebody did try. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Do you think there’s a lot of your colleagues still in the corporate banking industry that are dying to start their own businesses?
Frank: Look, I think there are very many, because I do run into them from now and again, and you talk about what you’re doing and you can see them light up as something they would want to do.

45:07
but probably will never do. And those are the people one day who wake up and say, I wish I’d taken more risk, I think. And I think that’s a sad scenario when you think this is something you’d like to do, but you are, you know, you let life get in the way, as it were, and you’re afraid to make that leap. And

45:37
Yeah, and then I can understand that it’s very comfortable being in the corporate structure, but if you don’t follow your dreams, you don’t follow your heart, you are going to wake up one day saying, you know, wish I’d taken more risk. What are we on this earth for, right? Then to live it to the fullest. That’s how I see it.
Christél: Absolutely. Well, but I think the positive side to this is you were not afraid to follow your heart

46:06
and you have started your business that is going really, really well and will be listed. Are you going to list on the Joburg Stock Exchange or will it be an international exchange?
Frank: Probably, you know, when I get there, I’ll list it on the Joburg Stock Exchange and, yeah, and take it from there. So, yeah, absolutely.

46:34
And I like the way you say it, like, you didn’t put the word hopefully there, you said, you will do this and you, and I think that’s how you got to think about things, right? You will do it because once it becomes, once you think of it that way, then it’s just a sort of a natural thing that will happen, not something you aspire to. And hopefully, if I’m lucky, hopefully if things go well, but if you say, yeah, this is what you’re going to do.

47:00
So you’re gonna so yeah, good thing. Good thing you said it in the way you did this one.
Christél: Well, I’m glad to appreciate that. I think it is extremely important when you are in business to not focus on whether you’re going to do it or not, but what will be your choices? Will it be Johannesburg? Will it be the London Stock Exchange?
Frank: Exactly, exactly.
Christél: Will it be in three years time or will it be in five years time?

47:28
Frank: Exactly, exactly. But it will happen.
Christél: I can imagine it and we will keep a very, very close eye on you, Frank. Thank you so much for your time. I know you are extremely busy and yes, you need to prepare for that listing on the stock exchange. So we do appreciate your time.

47:53
Frank: Thank you very much, Christel. Thank you very much for the opportunity. It’s been great talking to you. Fantastic.